We are moving closer to the point where we've to organize and structure terabytes of data as a daily routine. But this will only be possible if we have the "right metadata" at hand.

"While it's possible to add tags and metadata by hand, nobody would want to take that kind of time - the system itself needs to handle it! (Jamais, Cascio; 2000)". As would it be that easy !

What it really means to handle such an amount of data will become visible the same moment we start to use hard disk systems with 120 terabytes storage capacity; something we can expect within the next four years. Given this Wikipedia article is accurate the American Library of Congress contains only about 10 terabytes of data related to the entire print collection. Accordingly the Library has 29 million books and other print materials spanning up to 530 miles of bookshelves. Face it, we are still just talking about the twelfth part of the overall size of your prospected average data store. This comparision shows clearly that we will loose "the capability to know our data".

Consequently the digital revolution seems to be less about the acquisition, propagation and transfer of knowledge than about the development of appropriate technologies to collect, manage and disseminate huge quantities of information. Obviously state of the art tools are not making us smarter immediately. They just make us spending more time searching information and re-routing the flow of information.

In this regard neither tags and metadata nor intelligent,semantic systems will help us to extract more knowledge out of more data. Alone the emergence of new social processes in handling information could mean a substantial progress.